Tommie Smith

Recent Articles

The Donald Sterling lifetime banishment from the NBA at worst serves as a sad moment. At best, it could spark a long-needed movement. “That remains to be seen,” stated Alexis McCombs, a frequent sports and entertainment contributor for several magazines, including Black Enterprise, regarding the true import of the incident. She was in Los Angeles last week when NBA Commissioner Adam Silver declared Sterling a permanent persona non grata and talked to the MSR by phone. “I think the severity of [Sterling’s] comments is not only a black eye in sports but also to race relations in this country,” observed McCombs. Continue Reading →

Are today’s Black athletes that oblivious to their history? Many either don’t know or don’t want to know when Black athletes were consistent targets for the then-and-still-majority-White media. Times, they say, are different now — Black athletes don’t have to go through what Jim Brown, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Muhammad Ali did, along with their contemporaries as well as those who opened the doors for them. It’s sad that today’s Black athletes don’t know, or don’t want to know, just how much the Browns, Abdul-Jabbars and Alis took their social consciousness seriously, even at the expense of their illustrious careers. That these men and others like them cared more about representing their heritage, their Blackness, than endorsement deals. Continue Reading →